Learning To Write, Publicly

on still doing it, and a birthday of sorts

This week, Now is Good turned 4. I keep imagining the newsletter blowing out candles and getting ready for preschool. I lean on the doorframe, watching with a smile and a single tear as it choses a garish outfit with clashing patterns. Kids.

I started this newsletter with dual melodies What Now? and Why Not! chirping in my heart. One year into Covid lockdowns. I needed a new creative anchor to throw into the expanding sea of new reality. Yes, I tried my hand at sourdough bread, made a couple ok loaves. Then Boyfriend and I drove to Ojai for a couple days. In our short time away the starter exploded, shot the tin top clear off the glass jar. Of course I’d already projected some shade of My Child! onto the cute bubbling yeast. You could give me a petri dish of single cell organisms and trust, I’d find a way to feel maternal towards them. Seeing this fluffy bread-ready mass harden into a sad crust was too much to bear. I am not meant to mother in this lifetime, and yet those instincts are doused generously across my heart. Might as well cook up a newsletter, something that didn’t require the stater’s level of babysitting. A public forum to write and learn and learn how to write. I challenged myself to a weekly dispatch.

Growth may look like stumbling, but how else do we come to move a different way? I love this newsletter because it can be messy, at times inconsistent, reliably personal. I love every single person who comes here to read and sometimes respond with a similar chord of emotion. I didn’t set out to write anything too vulnerable. I began writing meditations and parable-ish essays about mindfulness. Another week, another dispatch. Another lot of typos and sentences with no ending. Suddenly I was riding some bird, already mid-flight with no known destination, grasping its feathers and hoping not to fall off. When I offered the harder parts of myself: my memories, my untraced notions, I was surprised to find connection. If you ever reached out to tell me how my strange specific story shared a curve with yours, thank you. I never felt it was possible to show the tougher parts and be seen like that. And see others too.

This newsletter and everyone who reads it, has seen me live in three different places. Making each one a bit more of a home. Finding home in myself. You’ve seen me through my Saturn Return, a friend break up, a friend’s funeral, through unexpected visits to Bulgaria and multiple times taking my parents to the hospital. I could go on. You’ve allowed me to take breaks, especially last year when I put this newsletter on pause so I could finish writing my book. A book that began because of the experiments performed in this newsletter. I told myself (and anyone who would listen) that I needed to close my eyes and run to the finish line.

I don’t really run, but for once I could understand the marathon mentality. Everything has to funnel into that singular purpose. It’s not do or die, so much as die or really, finally live. Pressing pause on the newsletter was scary. But I had to close my eyes and believe people would still be here when I got back. So I finished the book and I’m here and you are too. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

When I paused the newsletter, I paused the paid subscription portion—it’s still paused. At some point I’m going to restart it at a lower monthly price. I want to find an offering for paid subscribers that really feels aligned for me and you. If you have anything you’d like to see, please let me know.

I didn’t think this newsletter would change my life, but it really has. Not because a giant hand swept in and made me an offer. No, this singular creative channel is entirely of my own making. With only my failures and at times, bright ideas, leading the way. Learning a little more with every dispatch, seeing the overlapping outline of things and reaching for the inner core.

These days I’m recommitting to the newsletter with dispatches twice a month. It feels good to be here—like coming home and redecorating and having a party with a little homemade cake. My birthday is right around the corner (3.23), Daylight Savings just began (!!!) and Spring is next on the step and repeat.

There are new things coming and new things already here. I just started a radio show with Frank News called Moments for Now. It’s very me, very we’re here at the aerobics class but so is every breath ever taken in this place. New episodes every other Monday at 11am PST, or you can find me in their archives to listen. I have two pieces up so far. And Frank News is on Substack It’s a very small team led by documentary filmmaker, Tatti Ribeiro. She’s one of the coolest people I’ve met in the past 5-7 years—not that I keep a list but maybe I should!

Anyway, 2025 is powerful—you know it, we can all feel it. I’m here to harness anew and ride. Thank you for spending the past, present and future with me. I’ll be here for the duration.

xx
James

p.s.
as is yearly tradition, here are flowers for you: